


Dirty Jobs

by Dien



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 23:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dien/pseuds/Dien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode tag for Dead Reckoning, since I needed to try and reconcile in my head how forensics would not find Carter’s DNA all over the seat of the FBI car, and also reconcile how Fusco might feel about the situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirty Jobs

It’d be nice, Fusco thinks, if he knew what the _fuck_ he was looking for. But he doesn’t, just that Four-Eyes says _find them_ and Fusco jumps like the stand-up guy he is. Because shit’s serious, Wonderboy’s in it deep maybe, and this isn’t so different from the days with HR where, yeah, you better go when they say, you better go and find the rat, bury the body, because if stuff comes to light this whole house of cards comes down on everyone’s head, your own included.

And aside from that, Four-Eyes was worried. He could hear it.

He knows their names now, ‘Finch’ and ‘Reese’ ( _Jawn_ ), but he still thinks of them like he did in the beginning: Suit and Geek. Scary Fucker and Four Eyes. Bastard and Professor. He’d come up with a lot of names for them early on.

So tonight he’s driving to the location Finch told him, looking for Reese (slash-Suit-slash-Scary-Fucker-slash-Bastard-slash-friend) and Carter (who’s always been Carter).

Methodical, slow, peering down alleys and intersections until he sees— fuck him— a real mess, a black car pancaked and a fuckin’ _semi_ on it, what the _hell._ No flashing lights so it’s pretty clear he’s first responder. This is industrial area, mostly, so not even that many gawkers. Few homeless hanging back from the cars when they see his headlights coming down the street.

He has to make a choice, a choice he’s made a lot of times before, as he pulls up to the wreck and stops. Does he flash the badge or not? Is this official, or not?

HR wouldn’t have his back (to the extent that they would anyway) if he was questioned about being here, so the answer is, no, he doesn’t show his badge, not unless he needs to.

Fusco takes a breath and gets out of the car.

“Scram,” he says to the street people staring dead-eyed at his intrusion on their scene, and they give him a look of vague resentment. One mumbles through a curtain of stringy hair, “You gotta body,” and slides back to the side alleys.

His gut clenches. A body. Whose? Reese’s? _Carter’s?_

Neither, he realizes as he makes a wary circle of the wreck. It’s the FBI guy, Carter’s pal. Fusco doesn’t come close to check for vitals. He doesn’t need to, he knows what the fuck a corpse looks like. Big ol’ pool of black blood around the body and the car, enough to account for dead.

He exhales, then goes back to his car and opens the trunk.

Surgical gloves, you can pick ‘em up cheap. Use those to handle evidence, and all that, or use them to pretend you were never somewhere at all. These are not his flimsy pack of department-issued gloves, this is the 500-pack from Costco that he keeps in his trunk from the old days. He keeps a lot of things in his trunk, in that space that Donald Stills once occupied for a way-too-long drive down to Oyster Bay.

Fusco comes back to the scene and shines his Maglite around, his hands wrapped in blue latex.

The semi’s empty. The FBI guy’s the only body on the scene, living or dead. Windows busted, blood— not just by Mr. FBI, there’s blood in the back seat too, and a pair of handcuffs. Fusco checks FBI’s pulse now that he has the gloves on, just to be sure, but he knows anyway from those unblinking eyes. He does see that the blood doesn’t come from the crash, though. Bulletholes, neat as you please.

He crouches down by the car and thinks about what the fuck happened here.

It’s connected to Wonderboy, yeah. Like that’s even in question. Trucks ramming into cars and killing FBI agents doesn’t just happen on a fucking Wednesday in the city without Wonderboy being involved.

He plays the light around the mangled and squashed backseat area. Two different sources of blood. Not a lot for either of them, not like the nine pints Mr. FBI’s paid to the asphalt. There’s a thread here, snagged on the window’s frame of the right side of the car.

If he were here officially, Fusco could bag it and tag it and run it down to the lab, have them do their mojo. Maybe they say it’s from a suit. Maybe not.

On the left side of the car there’s a black hair against the seat, briefly shining in the strong beam of his Maglite. Longish. Carter’s length. Not that that proves any fuckin’ thing, lots of women have Carter-length hair.

But the gold earring winking at him from among pieces of shattered glass? Not so much.

He’s seen her wearing ‘em. Yeah, he looks, he’s human, she’s hot. And they’re very her: not big and showy, because only a stupid cop wears something big and dangly that can be dragged on, pulled in a fight, but there, that little touch of woman she clings to with her fingernails in the boys’ club. They look good on her. Lots of things look good on Carter.

He picks it up with blue-gloved fingers and drops it into a pocket.

Then Fusco sits back on his heels, flicks the light off, and stares up at the starless sky over NYC.

He doesn’t think _they_ killed FBI guy. Carter’d never go for it, and honestly, he doesn’t think Suit would either. Suit with his wonky-ass morality where the bad guys get their kneecaps fucking blown out and the good guys are untouchable except only Suit has the authority to decide who’s who. Suit and Geek, maybe.

Whoever drove the truck, then. Which is totally a Suit thing to do, the way he runs around the City like it’s his own private fucking battlefield, but if he was in the car, which is Fusco’s tentative theory, then he wasn’t driving the truck.

It doesn’t matter, though. It doesn’t matter if they killed FBI-guy or not, cuz when the FBI find their guy in a pool of his own blood and find the DNA of a city cop all over his backseat, it doesn’t _matter_ what Carter says or what the truth is, shit’s gonna get ugly.

Fusco stands up and goes back to his car.

There’s ammonia in the trunk, in a spray bottle. Another souvenir of the bad old days.

The homeless people have moved on, he thinks; either way he is not aware of them. It’s just him, three a.m. in the middle of factories and meat-packing plants and shit, holding his Maglite in his teeth as he shines it over the back seat and hunts for every hair, every thread, every strand he can find. They all go into a plastic baggie which is very definitely not going to the lab.

And then he spritzes with the bottle. Squirt, squirt, squirt.

The caustic scent of ammonia fills his nostrils as Fusco pulls the trigger. Smell is the scent most closely tied to memories, and for Lionel Fusco the memories are many.

Lots of bodies. Lots of people. Lots of things you gotta make up for, in the here and now, and it matters, it should matter, that he’s doing it for the good guys now, but the scent of ammonia is the same no matter whose blood you’re covering up.

Just like the old days.

Fusco thinks distantly of the places he’d rather be right now. At home, in bed. At home, watching a game on TV. A hockey rink with his son. A coffee shop with something warm to drink. Even his desk, with Carter doing her supercop thing a desk away from him. There’s a lot of places he can think of that are preferable to two feet away from a dead FBI agent, feeling the sightless eyes on him, his shoes crunching broken glass underfoot; forcing himself to be methodical and thorough and get every shiny-damp spot with the bottle.

He wants to hurry, because sirens could happen anytime, but he’s got to go slow and patient and not think about what happens if FBI finds him here ruining evidence, or even city cops. Just go slow and careful.

And tell yourself, over and over again, that, yeah it’s a dirty job, but you’re doing it for the good guys now.

And if the next day he looks Carter in the eyes while her earring burns a hole in his pocket and she lies straight to his face, well, that’s the good old days too, where it doesn’t matter how many dirty jobs you do, you’re still on the fuckin’ other side of the line of trust.


End file.
